GIRLS: A LIABILITY?

GOURANGI  VERMA

We had a house-help, let's call her Kamla, who used to work at our place on weekdays. Her family situation was, well, predictable. She and her husband did everything in their power to provide their ten-year-old son with good education at a private school. The husband used to toil at construction sites and the wife worked at as many houses as she could manage to provide the son with respectable education. The son was supposed to work when he grew up. They were hopeful that he, on becoming a working adult, would pull the family out of the rut of poverty they lived in.

 I think it is worth mentioning at this point, that Kamla had three daughters too. One of them, around twenty years old, was "married off" to a "boy of the same cast" when she was just nineteen. The same fate waited for the other two, thirteen and sixteen years of age. None of the three were sent to school. Not even primary education. The family’s reason was, let’s say, adequate- "They are supposed to work as house-helps when they grow up." They were woken up at ungodly hours in the morning every day, regardless of the weather, and the daughters cleaned and cooked. Kamla held the belief that sooner the girls start getting used to household chores, the better - because that was what they would be doing for the rest of their lives. Studies would be of no use when the girls would live with their husbands and in-laws; or when they would work as house-helps. The only thing the girls should be good at was household chores.

 Kamla tried to earn as much as she could and jumped at the chance of getting a new house to work at. The problem arose when she made excuses for not coming to work and sent her daughters instead. Understandably, when even they weren't able to work regularly (because managing ten houses daily wasn't a "bacchon ka khel", literally), she used to say, and I quote, "Itni choti bacchiyon ko dekh ke log zyada kaam karva lete hain." Frankly, I was enraged at her hypocrisy. She had no right to pull out the "young exploitable girls" card when she herself was responsible for putting them in this situation. But a few days later, the incident made me think. Was the mistreatment of the daughters really Kamla's fault? She was only preparing them for their future lifestyle - be it as wives or house-helps (though in this context, there is no difference between the two).

The favoritism for the son, and the neglect of female education was only a rational tactic for survival on her part. Moreover, why aren't girls allowed to have an education and a career, while boys are forced into going so? The belief that girls are a liability and boys are an asset - is not concocted from anywhere. It comes from the way rural Indian societies function. A female child, after marriage, lives with the husband and his family; while the male child remains with the parents. Investing in a boy's education would yield the maximum returns. Aside from the family structure, there are other factors which makes people reluctant to send their girls away for primary or higher education - such as, lack of facilities at government schools to deal with menstruation, the unsafe atmosphere for girls away from home, unequal wages, added to the fear of the loss of culture, the belief that a financially independent woman would neglect the family, and no one would marry a "know-it-all girl".

In a society, where the success of girl's life is only boiled down to marriage and nothing else, it is only logical that one prefers his sons to work, to safeguard his parents’ old age - while the parents get rid of the girls by sending them off to their ‘second homes’ as they are ‘paraya dhan’. Girl-child labor is one of the many outcomes of this mindset. It is not the worst, compared to inhumane, abhorrent actions where female babies are aborted, abandoned, deliberately neglected and underfed simply because they are girls. However, continuous neglect of females is the silent killer of society. Without equal opportunity for both sexes, and equal development of the two, we are all at loss. If a society considers one sex superior to the other, social progress will never be made.

Editor’s Note:  Hello! I hope you enjoyed reading the article. Female education is indeed a very important issue, especially in the Indian society where girls are only seen as a liability and boys as assets. Our writer, Gourangi Verma, has written and explained flawlessly her very own experience with her house-help and her views about it.   

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